• Enable Notices (on your development environment!)
• Use a Logging System
• Log Errors
• Check Function Parameters
• Use an Integrated Development Environment and Debugger
• Unit Testing
• No Magic! (Or, Avoid Side Effects)
• Use Manual Redirects When Debugging
• Keep Things Simple

Link: 9 PHP Debugging Techniques You Should Be Using

PHP has a PECL module for talking to memcached – look up how to install for your system, but be aware that it isn’t bundled. It’s a good module to include on your system however, quite a few apps will take advantage of it where available.

Memcache is object storage, objects are stored in a serialised manner in RAM, with a unique key to identify them. This means that you need a unique string to identify any object you may store in the cache. Primary keys work fine but look out for when you are storing multiple types of object in there – _ probably works better in that scenario.

The storage persists as long as the machine is on – a reboot empties the RAM and therefore clears the cache. You can also set how long a cached object is valid for. After that time, memcache will return false when you request your object and your code will fall through to its usual retrieval process.

Link: Getting Started with Memcache

As he’ll show you in a while, it is absolutely possible (and wise) to keep the two things clearly distinct and obtain a complete separation of presentation from logic.

The goal of MVC pattern is, as stated above, to identify (divide and develop separately) the 3 layers we have briefly outlined.

Link: MVC, XSLT and other animals

Some blogs automatically resize the pictures for you into a thumbnail – like the image to the right. What if you want the image a different size, though? You could allow the browser to resize it for you, or – better yet – write your own php script to resize the image dynamically.

If we write our own php script to resize the image dynamically, we can control both the image size and the file size. Check out the third image to the right – which was resized with a php script. You’ll notice that it looks nicer too – the browser isn’t designed to resize images

Link: How to Use PHP To Dynamically Resize an Image

With multiple logins for all the apps, we had to find way to integrate all logins for better management and maintenance.

Since we were using Apache with a PHP server, the solution was to find a way to consolidate the logins using PHP.

The answer is ldap() (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), this built in function through PHP, allows you to create username and password schemes using existing Windows authentication.

Link: Use Windows Login (Active Directory) For your PHP applications

Zend Framework was conceived in early 2005 while many new frameworks, such as Ruby on Rails and the Spring Framework, were gaining popularity in the web development community. ZF was publicly announced at the first Zend Conference.At the same time, no widely used framework had been made available to the PHP community to fulfill similar web development needs. The designers of Zend Framework sought to combine the ease-of-use and rapid application development (RAD) features of these new frameworks with the simplicity, openness, and real-world practicality that is highly valued in the PHP community.

Typically, specific development usage scenarios are implemented using more generalized software components through automatic configuration and/or code generation. In previous releases, the Zend Framework community has opted to complete development and testing of these underlying components before starting work on simplifying development tasks such as database migrations, generating scaffolding, and project creation and configuration. This practice has been the subject of some criticism since some functionality considered by many as necessary for a general release for modern web application frameworks is slated for future Zend Framework releases. Many ZF users, however, have found such generalized software components more reusable and extensible in implementing their applications. Zend Framework also seeks to promote web development best practices in the PHP community; conventions are not as commonly used in ZF as in many other frameworks, rather suggestions are put forth by setting reasonable defaults that can be overridden for each ZF application’s specific requirements.

Here is a set of screencasts designed to introduce a new user to the Zend Framework. They go over installation of the zend framework through creating a basic content website.

Link: Zend Framework: Getting Started Screencasts

Fist off we start by creating the connection to the database:

• $host: this is the location for the Mysql server it can be a hostname or an ip adress. it is usualy localhost.
• $db: this is the Mysql user account used to access the database.
• $user: this is the password for the Mysql user account
• $pass: this is the name of the Mysql database used.

Now we include the export function.

We will need to include the function ‘cuteExport’ in the file ‘cutenewsexport.php’

Now we declare what data files should be exported from cutenews:

• $newsfile: Cutenews uses ‘news.txt’ for it’s data. Specify the FULL path to this file.
• $categoryfile: Cutenews uses ‘category.db.php’ for it’s categories. Specify the FULL path to this file.

Now we start the export to mysql by calling the function ‘cuteExport’:

This function will export all data in the ‘news.txt’ file and ‘category.db.php’ and import it in a Mysql table.
The function will export all data to a table called ‘cutenews_export_year_month_day_hour_min_sec’ by default.
You can change this in the cutenewsexport file where it says ‘$table = “cutenews_export_” . date(“Y_m_d_h_i_s”);’.
When the function finishes all your data will be inserted into a mysql table.

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 <?php
 
$host = 'localhost'; // MYSQL database host adress
$db = ''; // MYSQL database name
$user = ''; // Mysql Datbase user
$pass = ''; // Mysql Datbase password
 
// Connect to the database
$link = mysql_connect($host, $user, $pass);
mysql_select_db($db);
 
require 'cutenewsexport.php';
 
$newsfile ='news.txt';
$categoryfile = 'category.db.php';
 
cuteExport($newsfile,$categoryfile);
 
?>

The include file:

Feel free to alter this file to your needs:

To change the default table name change the $table variable to your likings.

You can also export categories to a mysql table and use the ID as a reference in the export table.

file: cutenewsexport.php

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 <?php
 
 
############ DO NOT ALTER ############################
function str_replace_all($search, $replace, $subject)
{
    while (strpos($subject, $search) !== false)
    {
        $subject = str_replace($search, $replace, $subject);
    }
    return $subject;
}
 
############ END DO NOT ALTER ############################

function cuteExport($newsfile = '', $categoryfile = '')
{
    if ($newsfile == "")
    {
        echo "Please specify a 'news.txt' file to export.";
        exit;
    }
    if ($categoryfile == "")
    {
        echo "Please specify a 'category.db.php' file to export.";
        exit;
    }
 
    $export_count = 0;
    $export_success = 0;
    $export_failed = 0;
    $cat_count = 0;
    $cat_success = 0;
    $cat_failed = 0;
 
    // table name
    $table = "cutenews_export_" . date("Y_m_d_h_i_s");
    $tablecat = "cutenews_export_cat_" . date("Y_m_d_h_i_s");
    // table sql
    $create = "
		CREATE TABLE  $table (
  			`id` int NOT NULL auto_increment,
 			`date` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
 			`author` text NOT NULL,
 		 	`title` text NOT NULL,
  			`short` text NOT NULL,
  			`full` text NOT NULL,
  			`categoryid` int NOT NULL,
  			PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)
		);";
 
    $createcat = "
		CREATE TABLE  $tablecat (
  			`id` int NOT NULL auto_increment,
 			`category` varchar(100) NOT NULL,
  			PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)
		);";
 
    if (!mysql_query($create))
    {
        echo "Could not create export table !";
        exit;
    }
 
    if (!mysql_query($createcat))
    {
        echo "Could not create category table !";
        exit;
    }
    $lines_cat = file($categoryfile);
    foreach ($lines_cat as $single_line_cat)
    {
        $cat_count++;
        $value_arr_cat = explode("|", $single_line_cat);
        $i++;
        $catsql = "insert into $tablecat (id,category) value ('$value_arr_cat[0]','$value_arr_cat[1]')";
        echo $catsql;
        if (mysql_query($catsql))
        {
            $cat_success++;
        } else
        {
            $cat_failed++;
        }
    }
 
 
    // begin export
    $lines = file($newsfile);
    foreach ($lines as $single_line)
    {
        $export_count++;
        $value_arr = explode("|", $single_line);
 
        // insert export row in mysql table
        $query = "INSERT INTO $table (date, author, title, short, full,categoryid) VALUES (
			 '" . $value_arr[0] . "',
			 '" . addslashes($value_arr[1]) . "',
			 '" . str_replace_all("{nl}", "", addslashes($value_arr["2"])) . "' ,
			 '" . str_replace_all("{nl}", "", addslashes($value_arr["3"])) . "' ,
			 '" . str_replace_all("{nl}", "", addslashes($value_arr["4"])) . "',
			 '" . addslashes($value_arr["6"]) . "');";
 
        if (mysql_query($query))
        {
            // line exported
            $export_success++;
        } else
        {
            //line export failed
            $export_failed++;
        }
    }
    //Display export results
    echo "<table border='0' cellpadding='5' cellspacing='1'>
  			<tr>
    			<td colspan='2'><b>Export finished:</b><hr size='1' noshade></td>
  			</tr>
  			<tr>
  			  <td align='center'>$export_count</td>
   			  <td>posts in total.</td>
  			</tr>
  			<tr>
    		  <td align='center'>$export_success</td>
    		  <td>posts exported succesfuly.</td>
  			</tr>
  			<tr>
    		  <td align='center'>$export_failed</td>
    		  <td>posts failed.</td>
  			</tr>
  			<tr>
  			  <td colspan='2'><hr size='1' noshade></td>
   			  </tr>
  				<tr>
  			  <td align='center'>$cat_count</td>
   			  <td>categories in total.</td>
  			</tr>
  			<tr>
    		  <td align='center'>$cat_success</td>
    		  <td>categories exported succesfuly.</td>
  			</tr>
  			<tr>
    		  <td align='center'>$cat_failed</td>
    		  <td>categories failed.</td>
  			</tr>
		  </table>";
}
?>

Displaying news on pages divided in category can be done by filtering your result per category per page:

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 <?php 
 
$host = 'localhost'; // MYSQL database host adress
$db = ''; // MYSQL database name
$user = ''; // Mysql Datbase user
$pass = ''; // Mysql Datbase password
 
$link = mysql_connect($host, $user, $pass);
mysql_select_db($db);
 
$table = 'cutenews_export_2007_12_13_10_13_15';
$categoryid = (int) htmlentities($_GET['cat']); // You should make this more secure...
 
$sql = "select * from $table where categoryid = '$categoryid' order by date ";
 
$result = mysql_query($sql);
 
// displaying the actual page results:
 
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
 
    echo "
<div id ='news_$row[id]'>
<h1>$row[title] @ ".date("l jS M Y @ g:ia", $row['date'])."</h1>
<div>$row[short]</div>
<div>$row[full]</div>
</div>
";
}
?>

Now you can easily display news per category using a URL like: news.php?category=some_category_id